


Chance

by Jadedphase



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Grief, M/M, Spoilers, mention of Tony/Pepper - Freeform, post Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 20:55:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20663645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadedphase/pseuds/Jadedphase
Summary: In the end, when it came to choices, Stephen Strange was a selfish man.





	Chance

The world had always been built upon heavy things, words and ambitions, truths and lies; it had been built upon sheer determination of people to craft from dirt and nothing what was needed. And once, not so very long past, it had been rebuilt upon pain and sacrifice. Stephen knew it, bitter as the truth was inside him, because he had been standing in the wake of it. Standing on the shore with eyes drawn to a lifetime remembered and floating away on the soft lapping water, standing amid the ash and ruin watching a life rip itself apart for the sake of others. The world had been rebuilt on promises and something close to hope, but those were all things that he could no longer place trust in with a loss so deep.  
He had never been an emotional man, logic was both a curse and comfort, and the numbers game of knowing that one chance was all it came down to had brought nothing but misery. 

The universe had a balance and the cruelest part of it was something traded for something needed; one life for countless others. That one life though, it meant something more than the others that Stephen had not known and if he were a selfish man the way he once had been he might not have made the trade. It had been his choice, after all, he could have allowed the future to play out any number of ways. Some of those ways held more sorrow than others but time would heal wounds, he could not be condemned for things that others would have never known. 

A selfish man would have picked a future where his happiness was not lying silent and still within a grave, a future where unanswered questions would be forever in the back of his mind. He had wanted to be selfish with every fiber of his being, it was only in knowing that Tony would not have forgiven him for that. Somehow, some stray way, he would have known and seen that Stephen had put a value on every life and weighed Tony's as the greatest. It was nothing that he had not done since truly bonding with the other man, seeing in him a closer friend than expected and seeing in so many futures that never came to pass how much more that could have become. 

But those futures were ones were a little girl did not exist, where the trauma of losing everything drove so many to madness or grief beyond measure. Instead the yet to be unfolded outward with a young hero struggling without the guidance he had come to depend on, a child with wistful eyes at a projection of the great man everyone would tell her that her father was without knowing for herself, a woman who would forget at times not to set the third place at the table and reserve her tears for the moments she had alone in the bed too large for just one person. 

The future was not always kind, in fact, it very rarely was, but from all those pains would come strength. Stephen no longer knew if the strength would be enough but he couldn't stand any longer to speculate and had to leave it up to chance. Tony would have wanted that much, to see what the world offered rather than hang it all on predictable outcomes. 

It did nothing to calm the ache he never showed, millions of timelines and there was not a single one he could reach into, right the wrongs and return Tony to a moment where he lived and everything was good. Fate, foolish idea as it was, had already decided that Tony Stark had cheated death too many times, the devil wanted his due but it was in the choice that the man had proven himself truly better than any of the rest of them. Sacrifice was an ugly thing, praised but in the aftermath left horrible bruises and wounds; they would all feel them for long years to come. Some would never recover, this too Stephen had seen a glimpse of; not just himself but for others who would remain changed. The boy would throw his heart into every battle, thinking doing so would honor the memory of the one who had nearly been a father to him, and one day that determination would end his life. The little girl would grow up wanting to change the world, she would, her brilliance would do great things, but a day would come when the tears would fall when the recording would no longer play and the helmet would be tucked away from sight to avoid the pain of it. 

Heroes would come and go, the ones Tony knew would one day fall or step away from their place as saviors, each would carry memories that would bring nightmares with broken bodies and broken minds. The fact that he would not be there to see it felt like some comfort to Stephen, as he knew if there was anything Tony felt strongly it was the love he had for those he called family by blood or otherwise. It was the only thing that made it easier, the choice and the future, knowing there was some peace in the rest Tony had found.  
Stephen would not be granted any, not for centuries more, he would watch the world thrive and the people Tony loved dwell within it until they too had faded; it was a debt he felt he owed. 

He paid it, in months and years, ageless in ways that the others could not be, watchful in knowing their fates but unable just as powerless to stop it. It was not so very long after the boy, long since having become a man, left the world with a hero's sendoff and yet another marker on the ground to add to the seemingly endless ones he had watched being placed that the woman who used to be a little girl found him. She had a question to ask and he felt he had too few answers. 

"Would you have grown old together?" 

There was no accusation, no questioning of her father's loyalty to her mother because they both knew it was never so simple and love could span more than one person within a lifetime. She was wise, the girl, and Stephen saw the very best of Tony in her.  
He had confessed that, no, in any timeline he would have long outlived anyone else he knew. That was the nature of his role, until it was no longer his to carry, as it would still be for a long while. It did not trouble her though, she had only nodded and considered it before suggesting that if all things come full circle then so too must loss. 

"How many lifetimes are a fair trade for a broken heart?"

He had suffered it enough, she knew how deeply the wound ran from how it mirrored in his eyes, it was time to step away from all of that. The world could survive without one more hero if it must.  
The words had been puzzling, he had too much time after to mull over them without reaching any conclusions. 

But it was true, all things do come full circle. It arrived in such shockingly unintrusive and plain manner one day, right at the front door of his haven and with only a note attached that an old friend had gifted it to her a long time ago but she had not known if it was right to return it until she knew for certain that, somewhere, her father would be happy. And in the gleam of that stone that should no longer have existed, tucked away by a man who had bent the rules to live out the life he had wished to have been true before he returned with aging bones and a shield to pass on to the next who would take up the mantle, Stephen once again saw possibilities. 

The world took very little note when Stephen Strange was simply gone, stepped out of place and out of time into a different one and a different life waiting. He did not know how many lifetimes would feel like enough, or if there was any number that would heal the ache. If it suffered for the loss of him, perhaps, it was no more or no less than the burden every life demanded of the world; millions of possibilities could change in an instant. The world was built upon sacrifice, and sometimes, selfish choices.


End file.
